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Psychologism. The Haunting Fear that somewhere someone may exhibit behavior that hasn’t yet been labeled pathological.

APA Psych Net, 2016

Psychological (“mental”) health can be defined as the presence of healthy reactions or the absence of pathological reactions. But since there is no general agreement about a positive definition of psychological health, a negative one is more widely used. (The human behavior experts are unable to describe a healthy human!)

Behavior pathology exists when an individual’s reactions are disordered. This means one or both of two things: the reactions are not justified by the external situation or they are ineffective in achieving desired results. There are three major categories of behavior disorders: neurosis, psychosis, and character disorders. A neurotic is a person who admits to being unhappy, behaves irrationally, and exhibits certain symptoms (tension, phobia, compulsion). The psychoses represent the most extreme forms of pathological reactions. Psychotics have poor contact with reality, behave peculiarly, are a danger to themselves or others, and are often unable to care for themselves. Persons suffering from character disorders behave, with little evidence of anxiety, in an immature, self-centered manner oblivious to the needs of others and society. (All three describe typical American types!)

There are two major classes of psychological therapies, psychotherapy and somatotherapy. Psychotherapists attempt to modify their patients’ behavior by communication. Somatotherapists use physiological methods to bring about changes in behavior. The most commonly practiced forms of psychotherapy are psychoanalysis, client-centered therapy, group psychotherapy, and general psychotherapy. The main forms of somatotherapies are shock therapy and chemotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Psychology has taken over “the job” of dictating not only human behavior, but claims the authority to describe the very values of what it means to be human, and provides insidious methods of controlling social existence – reaching it’s tentacles into traditional religious and governmental domains: social, educational, and foreign policy activity. The development and rationalization of an inhumane prison system, military aggression and torture are but two examples of psychology’s triumphs over individual choice. Its bogus theories continue influence and spread into every aspect of personal and public life. And yet, these self-designated experts in human behavior cannot evaluate and predict which individuals are a danger to themselves and the public – the inability to identify potential school shooters and other mass murderers is a proven record of miserable fraud and failure of the application of psychological theories to actual human behavior.

Encyclopedia Britannica / Philosophy: Psychologism, in philosophy, the view that problems of epistemology (i.e., of the validity of human knowledge) can be solved satisfactorily by the psychological study of the development of mental processes. John Locke’sEssay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) may be regarded as the classic of psychologism in this sense. A more moderate form of psychologism maintains that psychology should be made the basis of other studies, especially of logic. A classical attack on both forms of psychologism was Edmund Husserl’sLogische Untersuchungen (1900–01; “Logical Investigations”).

Psychologism, however, continued to find adherents. Early in the 20th century, James Ward developed a genetic psychology that he considered essential to any adequate epistemology; Brand Blanshard’s monumental The Nature of Thought, 2 vol. (1939), insisted that epistemological studies must be rooted in psychological investigation;(modern psychology has insinuated its opinions into practical epistemology: a dangerous claim that psychological “theory” explains “everything human” Try to think of a category of human thought, behavior and knowledge that hasn’t been psychologized) and Jean Piaget conducted considerable psychological research on the genesis of thought in children, accepted by some philosophers as a contribution to epistemology. Similarly, empirical studies of innateness (via the “visual cliff,” in which an infant placed at the edge of a glassed-over “cliff ” shows behaviour suggestive of innate depth perception) continue to be seen as epistemologically significant.

For a peek into the vast reach of psychology in modern life, google Careers in Psychology

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I’m not saying that Aspergers, or the tendency to display Asperger traits, is not inherited; my family history veers toward that suspicion, but neither have I read any evidence that specific genes have been identified.

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Lots of “teaser” headlines skew the actual findings from “no results” to gene aggregations that are “maybe, sort of” present in 1-2% of Aspergers tested (if the subjects even ARE Asperger – such a subjective diagnosis to begin with) And yet those results are claimed to have significance.

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The problem with assertions that Aspergers is inherited and there are Asperger genes is that the erroneous information gets repeated over and over until the public (and the helping, caring, fixing industry itself) BELIEVE it’s established scientific fact. This is a common occurrence in all types of disseminated “knowledge.”

What’s so difficult in saying, Gee, I think we need a different strategy – an open mind would help – in locating possible genetic links.

A Pooled Genome-Wide Association Study of Asperger Syndrome.

College London, Institute of Psychiatry, London, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Note use of Autism Spectrum Conditions instead of Disorder

Asperger Syndrome (AS) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication, alongside the presence of unusually repetitive, restricted interests and stereotyped behaviour. Individuals with AS have no delay in cognitive and language development. It is a subset of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) (A new name?) which are highly heritable (is ‘highly’ a scientific quantifier? and where is the proof?) and has a population prevalence of approximately 1%. Few studies have investigated the genetic basis of AS. To address this gap in the literature, we performed a genome-wide pooled DNA association study to identify candidate loci in 612 individuals (294 cases and 318 controls) ofCaucasian ancestry, using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Mapping version 6.0 array. We identified 11 SNPs that had a p-value below 1×10-5. These SNPs were independently genotyped in the same sample. Three of the SNPs (rs1268055, rs7785891 and rs2782448) were nominally significant, thoughnone remained significant after Bonferroni correction. Two of ourtop(?) three SNPs (rs7785891 and rs2782448) lie in loci previously implicatedin ASC. However, investigation of the three SNPs in the ASC genome-wide association dataset from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium indicated that these three SNPs werenot significantly associated with ASC.The effect sizes of the variants were modest, indicating that our study was not sufficiently powered to identify causal variants with precision… At all!

What this last sentence “sounds like” to me is, “Our minds are made up that specific genes do cause ASC? ASD? We blame “the power” of our study for not finding the genes that we are convinced are responsible (then why do this type of pooling study?) so we’ll keep doing studies until “we create some significance.” It’s an inherently “fudgy” statement of the type that makes an Asperger cringe. Are these “bad people”? Of course not: but their thinking is so confined by years of academic “brain washing” that they cannot move beyond their “magic word” concepts.

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Dogs and cats are “granted” the experience and expression of emotion by neurotypicals – but this basic fact of life is not granted to Asperger Humans.

It’s not that Asperger types / Visual Thinkers don’t experience emotions; emotions are reactions to the environment. It would be impossible for any life form not to react to the environment, including bacteria, viruses and so on. I’m always astounded when certain people assume that only humans experience emotion: emotions are as old as life. Again, it’s one of those “word mistakes” that narcissistic “human obsessed” people make.

Fight, flight or freeze is basic animal behavior. These reactions are instinctual -reactions that have furthered survival for millions of years, including for humans. This system is the “emotion as reaction” system: it functions differently for predators and prey, but we “humans” want to claim to be the only “feeling” species, but we’re not. This denial of real pain inflicted on other living things is psychologically convenient; we give ourselves permission to torture each other(animals are by definition to be maltreated without conscience) simply by dehumanizing those “others” whom we declare to be “without emotion.” This permission to harm is applied by labels: subhuman minorities of choice who can be herded together with “dumb animals.”

Years ago I broke down for myself the imaginary “wall of words” by means of which humans divide themselves from other life – an obvious non-natural wall that is not helping our long term prospects for survival and causes no end of confusion and poor judgment – the worst outcome of which is an utter lack of concern or intelligence about the consequences of our decisions and actions.

These are definitions that I work with:

MIND: The sum of an organism’s reactions to the environment. Biology/instinct is the source of automatic reactions; other reactions may be learned. What humans label emotions are part of the mind.

CULTURE: The sum of an organism’s (or group of) interactions with the environment. These interactions are biological/instinctual, learned or invented.

All living things experience MIND and CULTURE; these attributes are not exclusive to humans. A bacterium, or group of bacteria, reacts to and interacts with its environment. This is true of all life.

MIND and CULTURE as defined here address the behaviors of life without “species” or other categories that divide “life” into a hierarchy of evolutionary importance or value that has been marching toward the culmination of human beings as the goal of evolution. Mind and culture CONNECT organisms rather than chopping them up into concepts that are convenient for the human filters of order, category and hierarchy (the “lumper-splitter” debate). “Parts” – bumps on the skull, etc. are the products of evolutionary solutions; most are temporary (prototypes), some are effective and long-enduring adaptations. Mind and Culture CONNECT inorganic and organic matter; connect chemistry, mechanics, physics, astronomy – and yes, geology (which actually includes all the other sciences!) as NECESSARY to life. Without the materials (elements, molecules, minerals and their combinations) and the energy (the electromagnetic spectrum) that drives the earth’s physical systems, life would not exist.

Life is a behavior of matter / energy, not some alien aspect of the universe that “hovers” in space looking for a place to inhabit.

So, how does this mind / culture view apply to Asperger individuals, and to the perception of an extremely recent type of human (modern Western social typicals) that “we” are in fact, subhuman humans? (By no means are Asperger’s alone in being the objects of this arrogant segregation into who qualifies to be counted as a “real human” and who doesn’t.)

Our minds and culture (Asperger types) simply don’t conform to a prescription that has been invented by a tiny self-assigned group of “those who dictate human behavior,”which is being imposed on humanity by Western Psychology.

Asperger individuals are people who have certain reactions and interactions with our environment that this “pushy” class doesn’t like. Too bad.

Our reactions to the environment are as valid as those of any other life form. Our fight, flight freeze response is more acute, and more in alignment with the reactions of wild animals. Our sensory “reception” is attuned to activity in the environment that social typicals may miss entirely. Our perception, memory and information processing are visual. We “see” images that are not created by words, but which incorporate the details of physical reality; its patterns, structures, relationships and “meaning” – not word meaning (which is human-centered meaning) but “how the world works.”

Neurotypicals can’t SEE our emotions and we don’t have the WORDS that match their expectations.

Maybe neurotypicals ought to think of us as a separate species. Pet cats and dogs can’t describe what they are feeling in words, but social typicals grant these creatures the commonality of emotion.

Like this:

My NT friend and I have been talking about a lot of things lately… (see what happens when people spend real face time together?) Winter has finally descended on us, so it’s “get reacquainted” season in Wyoming. Cabin fever is real, and we do eventually crawl out of our caves and collect in warm safe places and we talk to each other! How old-fashioned!

And discoveries in communication are made. How novel. Inevitably, a heated discussion took place (topic irrelevant) and the obvious problem was “logic versus arguing from personal emotional opinion” which really is the focus of Asperger / NT inability to discuss hot topics. It’s also “the problem” with NT – NT interaction at all levels of general communication and problem-solving.

Sanity prevailed after banging heads for a few minutes – we abandoned the topic under discussion with the usual NT “convention” – “let’s agree to disagree” “it’s all opinion anyway” (the fact-denial gambit) – evasions that drive this Asperger nuts! Gridlock, again and again. My attempts at presenting “logic” as a way out of or around this default position of gridlock had utterly failed.

What else is new in this traditional “wrong planet / wrong brain” NT – Asperger scenario?

Well, progress.

My friend was curious – What is logic anyway? My declaration that she was arguing from irrational personal viewpoints had made a chink in the NT wall of belief that “whatever goes on in my head is reality. I’m right, PERIOD and communication is about making other people agree that I’m right.” That pan-neurotypical surety had taken a tiny hit.

Long story short: The first problem was that she did not understand that “facts” are NOT whatever you believe; that logic is not a “bunch of facts” – leading to a conclusion that my personal beliefs are factual and logical, JUST LIKE SCIENCE.

Instead, I offered the notion that logic is not as a set of “correct” ideas (that is – a belief system – which seems to be the NT conception) but as tool for thinking; (it’s a skill that can be learned and practiced, but American schools don’t “get” this). In fact logic is analogous to a carpenter’s tool box that is vital to build practical and livable buildings and houses. Doors must open to provide access to the outdoors and to interior rooms. Electrical circuits must “work” (and you know they work by “fact” that the lights “turn on” and gadgets are powered. A “logical blueprint” of spatial relationships is followed to produce a useable building. You want a skilled contractor who can carry out the “basic plan” to construct variations that “make sense” – you don’t want stairways to nowhere…

“You’re talking about the Winchester house,” she said. “That house where the woman just kept workers adding crazy stuff that didn’t make sense.”

I was stunned! She had come up with the perfect analogy: a crazy house; so peculiar to the occupant that the result is merely a manifestation of that person’s beliefs, emotions, entrenched habits and beliefs, and does not represent or connect to the basic concepts common to houses (and being human) in general.

Suddenly we were both seeing the same picture of how the NT brain works from my POV.

“Yes! That’s how I see the NT brain at work. The person is building a Winchester House of the Mind.

NT people love their “Winchester Houses” – that’s fine, but wouldn’t it make sense to “hire” people who can build a “clean, simple, useable workable and livable” IDEA HOUSE, just like people naturally look for an architect, engineer and contractor who are skilled at their jobs? There are people like me who just happen to have “thinking talents” and the great frustration is that we are slandered by psychology types. We’re confronted by the bizarre task of having to fight back against being imprisoned in their Winchester House of irrational beliefs.It’s “irrational” to demonize individuals who happen to have “good thinking abilities” as being mentally ill and developmentally disordered, and labeling them as “social exiles”.

My friend loves her Winchester House, and she’s not about to do a lot of remodeling, but now she can SEE that it’s not the one and only house on the street; one that every one else ought to copy. And maybe I can straighten up the front porch a bit and add a couple of chairs that each have four legs of equal length, with comfy level seats and a supportive back so that “sitting and visiting” is more comfortable.

Another factor in the Asperger “analysis of the NT brain” – fatal hoarding.

Like this:

Museum dioramas were a source of conflict for me; the artistic presentation of the natural setting was highly appealing and increased my childhood determination to move “Out West” Dioramas are a lie of course; a false sense of timeless peace and tranquility is created that simply does not exist for wild animals. Animals are continually challenged by threats to survival and by necessity, by immediate movement toward food and water.

The color palette of museum diorama painting has always been my personal favorite and it truly exists in Wyoming and other western states. The light and colors are real, that is, what one sees is the light.

_________________________________________________________________ Once upon a timemy life was scheduled. It’s been twenty-four years since my time was sliced up to any degree between what I need to do and what I want to do. I can remember as a young child balking at “required future thinking” but I liked school and went along with being transported here and there – parents and adults mostly control our time and location as children.

It was in fact big events that caused anxiety: School field trips were planned and announced well-ahead of time, which placed a huge roadblock ahead. Being trapped in a bus for the long drive to a giant institutional building (usually a museum), which would be crowded with half the kids in Chicagoland, on any given day, was an ordeal. Once the busses unloaded, there would be the screeches of hundreds of children; the sharp clatter of “hoof beats” on concrete or marble floors, compounded by the shouts of teachers echoing along cavernous hallways. There was the threat of getting lost.

Old school museum collecting: In 1896 Carl Akeley “acquired” this leopard by killing it with his bare hands.

There were dead animals trapped behind glass, with glass eyes in place of real eyes, and insufficient time to stare at wondrous things like minerals and fossils, and no exit from the awful smell of commingled chemicals; preservatives, paints, floor wax and human sweat, from thousands of years of decay and creatures resurrected, by what was to me, a ghoulish obsession with death. I could smell the molecules of decayed wrappings and ointments that escaped Egyptian mummies encased in glass showcases.

Why on earth would anyone literally “gut” a dead body, as one would a do to a hunted animal Scrape out it’s “useless” brains and store the shell for eternity? Why would anyone want to dig up such an object, haul it to Chicago and display it in a glass case? My bet was that if archaeologists could meet the corpses as living Pharaohs and Queens, they would be disgusted by egomaniacs who diverted an entire region’s energy and resources, for thousands of years, to imaginary immortality. Surely there were better things for people to do here and now?

Perhaps I began to associate “schedules” with uncomfortable things. I know that I got tired of people telling me that they didn’t hear or smell anything unusual, as though I was making it up, hallucinating, or just being contrary. I got tired of adults pointing to “normal” children and saying, “look at the other kids. None of them is complaining about sounds or smells; no one else smells anything.”

I do remember that at some point during high school, I discovered that if I took care of obligations first, then I could be free to do as I pleased. After fifty years of following this simple algorithm (Do I have to do this today? / Yes or No. If Yes, just do it; if No, do what I feel like) it still works for me. This “lifestyle” enables a life that would be good for anyone. Every minute of every day must be scheduled. Not a minute “wasted” on living, contemplation, study unrelated to making money. Is that any way to live?

Like this:

Are there any “safe places” in which humans may live? Were there ever?

If someone asked me to describe the theme that characterizes my path in life, meaning the inner road that holds a “self” together; choices, decisions, preferences, I see a prey animal ( a rabbit is a good symbol) perpetually seeking safety or at least refuge. This image is ridiculous, not that it doesn’t express a truth: this “environmental circumstance” is true for every child, for every human, for every animal. The revelation is that my actions trend toward the opposite: intuition and rational observation both declare that there is no safety – so keep moving. Danger comes with standing still, both intellectually and psychologically. Survival skills are the result of survival.

Today’s technological wizardry meansnever having to leave your gated and surveilled “bunker” thanks to a preemptive perimeter that “keeps out” predatory humans. Living spaces have become military outposts disguised as traditional homes. Everything you need or want can be delivered to your castle door. The truth is that the “wizardry” is the access point for modern predators.

This “vision” merely extends the 1950s post-war hope for perfection; a modest house, a new car, and a nearby shopping mall. New school buildings for all those new kids being made in new bedrooms and delivered in new and modern hospitals. The promise made was that,

Safety was never having to leave suburbia.

That illusion should have died a half century ago, with one of the first acts of terror perpetrated by an overlooked and ignored white male with an obsession over being powerless. In my mind, the shift in the idea of safety as a “white privilege” began with the assassination of president Kennedy. A barrier was broken; the shock was that some “nameless, faceless, nobody white guy” could murder Jack Kennedy – a “god” to many people; an American Emperor.

Wealth, power, privilege, status and the Secret Service could not protect the president from one nobody with a rifle.

Patterns can be so obvious. And yet the American NT Universe is still in denial. The very vulnerability of public schools to mass murder by “one nobody with a gun”fails to generate or motivate a recognition thatthere are no safe places; OUR CHOSEN LEADERS and We the People have guaranteed that there can not, and will not be any safe places.

Americans have actively and deliberately spent the previous 50-60 years glorifying violence, developing and manufacturing weapons of every conceivable type and destructive power, inflicting violence on foreign people and on our own citizens, and guaranteeing access to weapons, not only to every American citizen, (sane, dangerous, or unstable) but to every malicious crackpot on the face of the earth.

Note below the “definition” of domestic terrorism, which does not actually include “young male” mass shooters.

In accordance with U.S. counterterrorism policy, the FBI considers terrorists to be criminals. FBI efforts in countering terrorist threats are multifaceted. Information obtained through FBI investigations is analyzed and used to prevent terrorist activity and, whenever possible, to effect the arrest and prosecution of potential perpetrators. FBI investigations are initiated in accordance with the following guidelines:

Domestic terrorism investigations are conducted in accordance with The Attorney General’s Guidelines on General Crimes, Racketeering Enterprise, and Terrorism Enterprise Investigations. These guidelines set forth the predication threshold and limits for investigations of U.S. persons who reside in the United States, who are not acting on behalf of a foreign power, and who may be conducting criminal activities in support of terrorist objectives.

International terrorism investigations are conducted in accordance with The Attorney General Guidelines for FBI Foreign Intelligence Collection and Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations. These guidelines set forth the predication level and limits for investigating U.S. persons or foreign nationals in the United States who are targeting national security interests on behalf of a foreign power.

Although various Executive Orders, Presidential Decision Directives, and congressional statutes address the issue of terrorism, there is no single federal law specifically making terrorism a crime.Terrorists are arrested and convicted under existing criminal statutes. All suspected terrorists placed under arrest are provided access to legal counsel and normal judicial procedure, including Fifth Amendment guarantees.

Definitions

There is no single, universally accepted, definition of terrorism. Terrorism is defined in the Code of Federal Regulations as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance ofpolitical or social objectives” (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85).

This “definition” (political or social objectives as motivation) does not include young male CHILDREN who are seeking revenge, are mentally unstable, or otherwise determined to become infamous, and are failing to make the transition to adulthood. Psychological neoteny has pushed the acquisition of adult thought and behavior well into the 20s, 30s or never– for males and females. Little support, guidance or instruction on “how to become an adult Homo sapiens” is provided in American culture: THE MODEL presented to male children is that of a testosterone-fueled rage machine whose only “solution” to overwhelming feelings of powerlessness and impotence is to pick up a gun and shoot to kill…

The FBI further describes terrorism as either domestic or international, depending on the origin, base, and objectives of the terrorist organization. For the purpose of this report, the FBI will use the following definitions:

Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or Puerto Rico without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives.

International terrorism involves violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any state. These acts appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping. International terrorist acts occur outside the United States or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to coerce or intimidate, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.